holes in our hearts and dust on the road
by Gray Doll
Summary: "Adam dies, God and Lucifer are never heard of again; Lilith and Eve inherit the earth." AU; Hermione, Bellatrix and Draco, after the war.


**Notes:** Bellatrix, Hermione and Draco after the war. Alternative ending to the war, obviously, and it's actually open to interpretation. Thank you for reading!

* * *

**holes in our hearts and dust on the road**

The owner of the Muggle café thinks they are aunt and niece.

"Oh, _please_. He thinks I would let my niece go around carrying books and dressed like a wannabe nun?" Bellatrix curls her lips over the edge of her full-bodied Frappuccino with its big three dollops of cream and five sugars. ("I've had enough of bitterness in my life already, thank you very much," she'd said to the slightly bemused waiter, with a roll of her eyes and an almost unconscious feline roll of the shoulders – but everything about Bellatrix lately was conscious.)

"And I would never let my aunt dress like an extra from Sin City," Hermione replies lightly. The tea is a bit too weak for her taste, but she gulps it down. "So I guess that goes for the both of us."

She is sure Bellatrix has no idea what Sin City is, but the older woman catches on the girl's tone and Hermione knows she understands perfectly. Bellatrix touches her bottom lip with a messily manicured finger, and smiles. "My God, Hermione Granger," she says softly and a shiver runs down the younger girl's spine. "I guess my initial assessment was all wrong, little Mudblood."

Hermione forces herself to raise an eyebrow. "Oh?"

Bellatrix leans forward, taut and curled and one long, heavy black curl falls indolently over her shoulder. "We were _both_ wasted on that stupid war."

A heavy silence, and something curls uncomfortably in the depths of her stomach; something like hate, something like recognition. Hermione leans back. Bellatrix gives a slow smile, a lazy curve of her blood-red lips, and clinks her mug against Hermione's.

The older witch rolls the word around her mouth like fine wine before she spits it out; "Cheers."

* * *

She tells Bellatrix everything.

The horcruxes, the sword, the prophecy, the ancient castle, the slaughter in a sea of students.

"They're all gone, then?" Bellatrix asks, and her voice is quiet. Her eyes are dark and they do not waver for a fraction of a second, for the first time – Hermione remembers those eyes shining bright, feverish and unfocused. They're different, now.

Her voice is curt. "Yes."

"And you got out," Bellatrix says, a simple thing with a teasing undertone, and she leans back. Beneath her polished British accent, there is the curl of another language, something old and antiquated and devoted to a dark, mad cause; Hermione has trouble remembering that Bellatrix is pretending sometimes. She has trouble remembering that the woman sitting across from her has wrapped herself so thoroughly around the façade of a runaway, of a person reverted, that it becomes real. The curl in Bellatrix's voice jolts her awake. "Of course."

Hermione swallows, and looks down. "Would you rather," she says after a long while, "It was somebody else?"

Bellatrix shrugs. "Of course I have other options. There are other people I'd rather have here - you're one of the worst ones, actually."

Hermione gives a shrug of her own. "Your husband? Your sister?" Bellatrix's eyes are carefully blank; Hermione swallows the bile in her mouth and carries on. "Voldemort?"

"Ah," Bellatrix smiles then, an ugly thing torn from her lips by force. "Touché. I don't think I've thanked you yet, Hermione Granger, for ridding me of the man hell-bent to kill me for running away. For ridding me of my life."

It's almost like staring into a mirror at a Muggle funhouse. There's a curve to the mouth of Bellatrix Lestrange, ex-Bella Black, that she doesn't have, something narrowed about the set of her eyes, but they look similar, the two witches; the eyes are weary, a practiced kind of nonchalance hanging from both their faces, the lips pursed and curled with effort when they deem they have to smile. Like looking at yourself in the mirror, with the ends connected awfully wrong; the glass splinters fractured into strange, uncomfortable angles.

When she doesn't reply, Bellatrix drains the rest of her mug, and slides it across the table. "I suppose this is as poetic an ending as any. Like the endings in your books. Happily ever after." She stands, and winks. "Adam dies, God and Lucifer are never heard of again; Lilith and Eve inherit the earth."

She watches Bellatrix waltz out of the café, hips swaying.

* * *

Bellatrix finds her in a gallery in Paris, one year later.

She slides into the empty place next to her, smooth and sinuous where Hermione is still and unmoving.

"Ugh," Bellatrix says, drapes an arm across her shoulder and Hermione wonders idly if she is supposed to flinch, she wonders if she's going to feel the older woman's nails digging into her flesh through the light material of her modest shirt. "The painting is _much_ better than the painter. Manet must have been a terrible bore - my great great great grandfather knew him, you know."

"I have no doubts you'd kill whoever bores you, then?" she says, lips curving. She is only half joking.

Bellatrix tilts her head, removes her arm from Hermione's shoulders and steps a bit closer to the painting than strictly recommended. One hand is loosely on the curve of her waist, long fingers tapping against the rough material of her dress (more tidy than the ones she used to wear, Hermione has to give her that. She still gets weird looks from some Muggles at times, but not nearly as much as she used to. The wizards don't even bother with hunting the elusive fugitive any more, so naturally Bellatrix does not care.) "Does it matter?"

They stare in silence for a while. Around them, tourists bustle, groups of bored teenagers are lead from exhibit to exhibit, and Bellatrix turns to cock an eyebrow at her.

"What?" Hermione asks, still as though carved from stone, without turning away.

"I would have never picked this to be your favourite." Bellatrix murmurs. "I was thinking you'd like something horribly perfectionist and dull, like yourself. Maybe... a landscape. Maybe some awfully over-replicated Old Master. _Lady with an Ermine_, maybe? That would appeal to your sense of self-righteousness."

It's amazing how little Bellatrix's taunting gets to her lately. It's amazing how little you care, once you've saved yourself and lost everything else.

But Hermione supposes Bellatrix would know that better than anyone.

"You don't see the appeal of _Olympia_?" she asks instead, voice plain and conversational.

Bellatrix stares at her for a beat, then turns back to the painting. Then back to Hermione. "I'm a Black," she says eventually, simply. _Of course I do_, is what she does not say out loud.

_Ah_. Hermione's eyes trace the protective hand at the juncture of the woman's thighs, the blankness of her eyes and the subtle dare as she stares outside her frame. _I see. A Black, indeed. _For a moment, she doesn't really know what to feel about Bellatrix.

"She's a prostitute," Hermione says calmly instead of voicing her thoughts.

"She's also the mountain of the gods," Bellatrix replies, and she looks suddenly bored, eyes lidded. She takes Hermione's hand, threading her fingers with the younger witch's, and a few years ago (Hermione knows this) that would have made them both flinch in disgust. "You'd be surprised, how close deification and commodification run." A moment passes, and she is leading Hermione away from the painting. Bellatrix grins. "Put that in your Muggle college thesis, little Hermione. You can quote me on it."

Hermione doesn't speak again until they exit the grand gates of the museum; only then does she say, "So what now?"

They grab lunch.

* * *

If Hermione stops pulling her hair in tight ponytails in vain attempts to tame it, if her shirts start to have a lower neckline, if Bellatrix's heels should no longer be legally classified as assault weapons, then they don't talk about it. If Hermione starts painting her lips the same shade as Bellatrix, if she feels more comfortable now in stilettos than sneakers, if Bellatrix stops wearing black and steals Hermione's flowing scarfs and careful jewelry, then they don't talk about it.

If Bellatrix introduces them as aunt and niece to the handsome men either of them meets in bars, then neither of them mentions it.

The war is over, there's a new world order, and for them this takes six years, eight months, one week, four days; Hermione leans back against the bar, her finger tapping on her champagne flute, and points at two men sitting opposite each other at the other end of the club. One is shorter than the other, but they look alike enough to be brothers; both have pale skin and dark ruffled hair, lean bodies and long fingers. One has green eyes, the other dark brown that shine like rubies in the crimson neon lights of the club.

"Them," Hermione says.

Bellatrix inspects them. Smirks. And clinks their glasses together. "Cheers."

("Harry," she whispers later against the stranger's lips. In the next room, she's almost certain Bellatrix is calling "Harry's" brother "Tom".

When Bellatrix erases both the young men's memories and sends them off, neither of them speaks about it. A week later though, Bellatrix leans forward, her breath hot and heavy next to Hermione's ear and says, "_Harry_? I thought you loved your ginger boy best."

Hermione shakes her head. "It's different.")

* * *

They do not speak about the past. They learn to do that after a while, and it's easier that way.

When Bellatrix dies, thirteen years after Voldemort, after the war, after the Horcruxes, after everything, Hermione looks down at the illness-ridden body of the dark-haired woman, and sighs. She contacts Draco Malfoy, and the boy (no, a man now, she reminds herself) comes to London from the ends of the world where he'd run to, to give his aunt a proper funeral.

"So how did you even find her?" he asks her later, after the little clandestine ceremony is over, and Hermione is almost shocked to see that his eyes are as gray, his hair as silver, as she remembers them. There is a difference to the cut of bone, the slant of his eyes and the crook of his cheek – everything is hollower, crafted and tired, but he's the same, and it makes something in Hermione's stomach coil and clench.

It's the first little piece of remembrance she's had in over a decade. All this time she'd convinced herself she had forgotten, and now; enter a Malfoy, bringing with him the images of two boys holding hands with her, one with hair like fire and the other with eyes like emeralds, flying on their brooms, slaying dragons, firing curses, _dying_.

Hermione stops, and her breath catches. It takes her a while to calm herself down, to give a nonchalant shrug and tear her gaze from Draco's gray one. "I was with her the whole time," she says lightly, and she can feel more than she can see Malfoy's brow furrow.

It takes her a few days to convince him that she's telling the truth, and in the end he just laughs and shakes his head. "It's so bloody absurd, Granger" he says, his voice as cutting as it always was, "it's believable."

* * *

"Will you return to London, then?"

It's more comfortable than it should be, talking to Draco Malfoy. They're in a small Muggle pub in Dublin, and Hermione can't help but expect Draco to call her _Mudblood_. He doesn't, and it's almost wrong.

She takes a sip of her scalding coffee, looks out the stained window. "No. Why should I?"

The blond shrugs, long hair falling in front of his eyes and he brushes them away with an indolent hand. Hermione doesn't think she's ever seen him so uncaring, so weary. "I just supposed you would; you'd be hailed as a hero back there, you know that."

The chuckle dies in her throat, and what escapes her lips is a chocked sound like a sobbed whisper. "Yeah. I do."

A beat, and Draco speaks again. "So what where you doing with my aunt, anyway?"

"Walking the world. Judging art. Seducing men that reminded us of all the ones that died. Drinking coffee. Fucking every now and then when we got bored. Simple things, really."

Draco meets her gaze, his eyes widening just slightly, as though daring her to laugh, to tell him she's only joking. She doesn't and the feeling in her stomach grows, that clenching thing that makes her feel like she's falling, like she's about to throw up.

"Wow, Granger. That's... interesting. Yes – interesting, certainly." Draco's lips tremble, and for a fraction of a second he looks like he's about to cry; then a barking laugh bursts from his lips, and he runs a hand over his face. "_Merlin_, girl. Who are you and what did you do to Hermione Granger?"

This time, Hermione does chuckle.

* * *

They return to London together.

"Where's the '_welcome home_' sign?" Draco asks, and she can't help but laugh as he wraps an arm around her waist and leads her inside the Leaky Cauldron. She doesn't remember when exactly she started feeling comfortable with Draco touching her.

She supposes it happened a long time ago, when she first entered that café with Bellatrix. Or longer ago still; when she saved herself, and lost everyone else.

"Aren't you worried someone might see us and recognize us?" she asks, a playful lilt to her voice that Bellatrix taught her how to use. It does come in handy, sometimes.

Draco gives a shrug, nods to the barman as though they're old friends; no one seems to know who he (or she) is, no one spares them a second glance. Perhaps this is a good thing. "They better do. You're a hero of the war, and I'm a Malfoy. If they do not recognize us, who _will_ they recognize?"

Ah, there it is - the Black spark, Hermione thinks, and lets her lips curve ever so slightly upwards. "You are so very modest, Draco Malfoy."

"Hmm, that's why you like me so," he says and it sounds distracted. She knows it isn't. He's too much like his aunt when it comes to that, after all. "Ladies first," he says with a crooked grin when he the brick wall dissolves before them, and the bright light of Diagon Alley shines through.

Hermione hesitates; just slighty, just for a second, but Draco notices.

"Oh, don't worry, you won't be marked for fraternizing with the enemy," he says with a roll of his eyes, and then a wink. Very Bellatrix-like; very Malfoy-like. At some point, it will even start reminding her of the Weasley twins. Huh. It's weird, she thinks, how all things start to feel the same after you've lost them all. "There are no Death Eaters any more."

Hermione sighs, and steps into the daylight. A few moments after, Draco does the same.


End file.
